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The Obama administration is considering "targeted sanctions" against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad in response to a violent crackdown on protesters, the White House said on Monday.

"The brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people is completely deplorable," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "The United States is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown and make clear that this behavior is unacceptable."

A US official said earlier that the measures under consideration included a freeze on assets and a ban on US business dealings.

The talk of US sanctions came as Syrian troops and tanks stormed Deraa on Monday, seeking to crush resistance in the city where a month-long uprising
against the autocratic 11-year rule of Assad
first erupted.

A witness told Reuters he saw bodies in the street after hundreds of
soldiers in armored vehicles poured into Deraa, a few miles from Syria's
southern border with Jordan which officials said was sealed off. Various media reports quoted human rights activists as saying at least 25 people were killed in violence on Monday.

Also Monday, Syria closed all its land border crossings with neighboring
Jordan, Jordanian officials said, following the deployment of Syrian army tanks
in the southern border city of Deraa. A spokesman in Damascus denied the closure, but photos of the sealed border were published in the world's media shortly after.

A senior diplomat in the Jordanian capital confirmed that the two main
Syrian crossings at Deraa and Nassib on the Syrian side were closed to
traffic. An official told Reuters the "timing is related to what appears
to be a major security operation that is taking place right now."

A leading Syrian human rights campaigner said security forces, which
also swept into the restive Damascus suburb of Douma, were waging "a
savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats".

Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 350 civilians
since unrest broke out in Deraa on March 18. A third of the victims were
shot in the past three days as the scale and breadth of a popular
revolt against Assad grew.

Assad lifted Syria's 48-year state of emergency on Thursday but
activists say the violence the following day, when 100 people were
killed during protests across the country, showed he was not serious
about addressing calls for political freedom.

Monday appeared to be the first time the authorities have sent tanks into population centers since the protests began.

The raids on Deraa and Douma suggested that Assad, who assumed power
when his father died in 2000 after ruling Syria with an iron fist for 30
years, was determined to crush the opposition by force.

The witness in Deraa told Reuters he could see bodies lying in a main
street near the Omari mosque after eight tanks and two armored vehicles
deployed in the old quarter of the city.

"People are taking cover in homes. I could see two bodies near the
mosque and no one was able to go out and drag them away," the witness
said.

Snipers were posted on government buildings, and security forces in army
fatigues had been shooting at random at houses since the tanks moved in
just after dawn prayers.

Tanks at the main entry points to Deraa also shelled targets in the
city, a resident named Mohsen told Al Jazeera, which showed a cloud of
black smoke hanging over buildings. "People can't move from one street
to another because of the shelling."

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